Heavy fighting in Abidjan as Alassane Ouattara’s forces backed by France advance on Ivory Coast presidential residence The biggest joint ground assault of the war in Ivory Coast so far is now under way against Gbagbo’s presidential residence, an Ouattara official claimed. Apollinaire Yapi, a spokesman for Alassane Ouattara’s military commander Guillaume Soro, said the pro-Ouattara republican forces were advancing in the Plateau and Cocody districts of Abidjan on Monday with significant French support. “It is the biggest ground assault since this started,” Yapi said. “This time it will not stop. It will continue until Gbagbo steps down, or at least until he is pushed back into his residence. If he wants to stay there as a prisoner then he can. The main concern for Mr Ouattara is for normal life to resume.” Yapi added: “What’s happening is the same as yesterday, by ground and helicopter. The military target is to destroy all heavy weapons that have been threatening the civilian population. They are not targeting Mr Gbagbo. He must be captured and put on trial.” The Red Cross was also present, collecting the wounded and killed, he added. Meanwhile Yapi claimed hundreds of pro-Gbagbo fighters were in custody at the Golf Hotel and other locations. French military officials were not available for comment. A UN mission spokesman said: “We haven’t had an assessment of last night’s operation. I can’t speak for the French forces.” Twenty-four French military vehicles rolled out of their base in Abidjan on Monday morning in a fresh attempt to stem the fighting in Ivory Coast’s key city. The convoy included three tanks and several armoured personnel carriers. Residents have reported heavy fighting between forces loyal to Laurent Gbagbo and Alassane Ouattara in the Cocody and Plateau districts. On Sunday night, at least six French and two UN helicopters fired rockets on the presidential residence where Gbagbo is defiantly clinging to power. Gbagbo’s spokesman Ahoua Don Mello said thick smoke billowed from the presidential residence after the combined strikes, but he declined to say whether Gbagbo was inside at the time. “UN and French helicopters continue to fire at President Gbagbo’s residence which has been partially destroyed,” he told Reuters on Sunday night. The head of the UN and the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, authorised the strikes, accusing Gbagbo of continuing to use heavy weapons against civilians in his bid to hang on to office more than four months after losing the presidential election. Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, said Gbagbo’s camp had pretended to surrender on 5 April so they could regroup their forces and redeploy heavy weapons. They have since resumed attacks on civilians, the UN mission (UNOCI) headquarters and patrols and Ouattara’s base at the Golf Hotel, he said. “On 7 April, Mr Gbagbo’s forces used armoured personnel carriers mounted with heavy machine guns to attack the civilian population in Adjamé and Attecoube districts,” Ban said. “More than 200 civilians from the two districts came to UNOCI headquarters to seek refuge, and the mission treated 50 wounded civilians.” He continued: “These actions are unacceptable and cannot continue. The continued use of heavy weapons against the civilian population and our peacekeepers, as well as the attack against the headquarters of the legitimate government, have compelled me, once again, to instruct UNOCI to use all necessary means to prevent the use of these weapons.” It was for this reason that the UN carried out last night’s military operation, he added, with support from the French at Ban’s request. “I am particularly concerned about the humanitarian situation across the country and about human rights abuses. Civilians are bearing the brunt of the violence – the fighting must stop. Mr Gbagbo needs to step aside immediately.” Jean-Pierre Mignard, a lawyer for Ouattara, the internationally recognised winner of the November vote, said he supported the French and UN strikes. “We are satisfied because the Gbagbo residence is a headquarters, and it is from this headquarters that shots from heavy weaponry are being fired,” Mignard told Europe-1 radio. “Gbagbo is in the process of creating a situation of civil war to make the situation impossible.” On Sunday night residents from nearby neighbourhoods reported seeing two UN Mi-24 attack helicopters and a French helicopter open fire on the residence. Reporters saw the helicopters take off from the French military base followed minutes later by explosions coming from the direction of the residence. Successive waves of French helicopters took off from the base in the following hours and additional bombardments could be heard. A first round of UN and French air strikes last week destroyed some of Gbagbo’s arsenal of tanks, mortars and other heavy weapons. Gbagbo has been living in a bunker in his residence in Abidjan for nearly a week. Pro-Ouattara forces began an offensive late last month to install him in power, sweeping across the country in just days before meeting resistance in Abidjan. Human Rights Watch has accused the pro-Ouattara forces of killing hundreds of civilians, raping political opponents and burning villages during the offensive to try to put him in office. “Everyone here is traumatised. We’ve all lost something – a member of the family, our homes, our belongings,” Philomene Houe, a 39-year-old soap maker in the western town of Duékoué, told the Associated Press. Ivory Coast Laurent Gbagbo Alassane Ouattara France United Nations David Smith guardian.co.uk
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Ralph Lauren’s solar-panel backpack charges your phone in hours, your credit card in seconds
April 11, 2011 No Comment
We here at Engadget are in favor of hitting the books from time to time, but we can’t have lame gadget-less backpacks hurting our true techie rep. That’s why we’re excited to see Ralph Lauren outing its first solar – equipped knapsack as part of its RLX sports line. Four solar cells around back harness the sun’s power to generate 3.45 watts — completely juicing up an iPhone in a purported two-to-three hours, assuming you’ve got “proper sunlight orientation,” of course. Like the optional orange hue (it also comes in black), the sun-sucking cells aren’t particularly low profile — but for $800 don’t you want something, uh, recognizable? Still, if you simply must be that guy be sure to hit the source link and don’t look back, but for everyone else, might we recommend a portable USB charger for a little less coin? Ralph Lauren’s solar-panel backpack charges your phone in hours, your credit card in seconds originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 11 Apr 2011 07:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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TV host comes under criticism from government and media for allowing six-year-old boy to mimic a striptease dancer The Philippines’ most popular TV game show was pulled off the air on Monday amid a public uproar over the host letting a crying six-year-old boy mimic a striptease dancer. Willie Revillame, who hosts the show Willing Willie, said he was taking two weeks of leave after which he will announce whether he’ll return to television. Angry viewers and commentators have launched a campaign on social networking sites to remove Revillame from the show, which offers cash prizes for singing, dancing, storytelling and playing games. They say Revillame showed poor taste and mocked his mostly impoverished viewers by allowing the crying boy to gyrate as a striptease dancer. The boy was a contestant and earned 10,000 pesos (£142) for his dance. The outcry led major sponsors to pull out, including Procter and Gamble, Del Monte Pacific, Unilever and Philippine fast-food giant Jollibee Foods. The 12 March episode also has prompted soul-searching discussions about the quality of TV entertainment in the Philippines. TV5 network said it wants to improve the programme and work with television and advertising industry stakeholders on guidelines for the participation of children in all game and reality TV shows. Philippine-born theatre actress Monique Wilson, in a widely circulated email carried by local media, argued that such TV shows “dumb down audiences [and] disempower them by creating a mendicant society with game shows that promise ‘quick money’”. Benjamin Pimentel, a US-based columnist for Inquirer.net, the online edition of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, criticised Revillame for “shining a harsh, cruel spotlight” on poverty “for cheap laughs and for ratings”. Social welfare secretary Corazon Soliman last month condemned “the emotional abuse and humiliation” the boy suffered and said the programme violated a law against child abuse. It was not clear if Revillame and TV5 will face charges. The government’s commission on human rights and the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board said they were investigating. Revillame has apologised but said his detractors had mounted a campaign “until they bury me alive”. He blamed his former network and competitor ABS-CBN television for trying to destroy his career and threatened to sue colleagues who criticised him. The Philippines’ highest paid TV host has ruffled feathers in the past for his often brash language and lewd jokes. In 2006 a stampede in a waiting line at a Manila stadium where Revillame’s show was to be broadcast killed 74 people. Criminal charges of negligence against Revillame and executives at ABS-CBN, where he worked at the time, were later dropped. Philippines Reality TV Television Children guardian.co.uk
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This would-be puff for the preservation of vanishing species highlights instead the hopelessness of the task For our grandparents, Donald Duck’s big-screen exploits were a carefree pleasure. Nowadays it seems, the wacky escapades of animated creatures must be predicated on an eco-sermon. Animals United brought our children up to speed on biodiversity . Now, Rio confronts that topic’s cutting edge: extinction . The hero, Blu, and the heroine, Jewel, are the last surviving specimens of the Blue Macaw . Unless they can mate successfully, their species will die out. Efforts to prevent this dire outcome generate the film’s thrills and spills. In fact, there are several species of macaw that happen to be blue. Rio’s story is based on the predicament of one of these, Spix’s Macaw . Like its fictional counterpart, this species is presumed extinct in the wild , and its future depends on a captive breeding programme . A hardly less gloomy fate awaits many other birds. Of the world’s feathered species, 13 per cent are now listed as endangered . This, you might think, is a theme that should surely grip our youngsters, eco-sanctimonious as so many now are. Nonetheless, it’s been more or less forgotten by the end of the film. When Blu and Jewel make out at last, we’re not even told whether issue flowed from their union. For Rio wants no real truck with jeopardy, either immediate or theoretical. Like its Ice Age predecessors, it swamps any hint of dread in either slapstick or exuberance. Nor does it set much store by the glory of nature’s profusion. A plethora of colourful feathered creatures flutter their way through Brazil’s lurid landscapes. Yet they don’t assert the importance of biodiversity. As it turns out, they do the opposite. Various though these avian life-forms may appear, they’re in fact all members of just one species. It isn’t even a bird. It’s a mammal called Homo sapiens. Blu explains himself thus: “I can’t fly, I pick my beak, and once in a while I pee in the birdbath!” As in other such anthropomorphic exercises, it’s not the diversity of the biosphere that brute multiformity celebrates, but the variegation of human personality. Rio’s birds proudly display the traits of which only humanity can boast. They’re vain, competitive, ingenious, witty, sulky, timorous, creative, ironic, adaptable, adventurous, quarrelsome, collaborative and romantic. What a piece of work are they! Inevitably, therefore, the message that the film offers its young audiences isn’t that wildlife is wonderful but that people are amazing. The spectacle provided by the incomparably rich birdlife of South America is easily outclassed by the magnificent extravaganza that is the Rio carnival in 3D CGI. This is of course paradoxical. For it’s humankind which is driving the very Sixth Extinction that’s propelling birdies like Blu and Jewel into the history books. As the palaeontologist Richard Leakey put it, “Homo sapiens is poised to become the greatest catastrophic agent since a giant asteroid collided with the Earth 65 million years ago , wiping out half the world’s species in a geological instant.” So is the Murdoch empire stuffing our children’s heads with dangerous nonsense while pretending to edify them? Maybe not. Maybe it’s just letting them know what’s really what. It’s clear that many of our planet’s current species are indeed on their way out, and that preachy films won’t be able to save them. This is because of the way people are. They’re just like the birds in Rio, unbridled, shameless and unstoppable. There are 6.7 billion of us already, and billions more are on the way . We all want to eat well and enjoy ourselves. If that means raping the habitat of our fellow creatures, and it does , we don’t really care. This phenomenon isn’t an ugly aberration: it’s more or less what you’d expect. Evolution doesn’t just create new species; it destroys old ones as well. The survival of the fittest implies the displacement of the weak. So far, 99.9 per cent of all the life forms that have ever existed have already become extinct , for one reason or another. Maybe Spix’s Macaw is doomed to join them ere long. If so, too bad. Enjoy the movie, kiddies. Animation David Cox guardian.co.uk
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Benghazi, Libya – African Union (AU) mediators negotiating a peace in Libya are due in Benghazi Monday, where they plan to meet with rebel leaders a day after they got Libyan leader Moamer Gaddafi to sign on to their plan. However, the visit comes amid reports of continued fighting for key Libyan cities. The five-member panel, chaired by Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, met with Libyan ruler Moamer Gaddafi in Tripoli Sunday. The African Union says the Libyan leader has accepted their plan. But it is not clear how that message will be received by members of the opposition Interim Transitional National Council (ITNC), who have said they will settle for nothing less than…
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FREEDOM TO FASCISM – (Tax Fraud, Lies, Deception) 4/8 FREEDOM TO FASCISM – (Tax Fraud, Lies, Deception) 3/8 FREEDOM TO FASCISM – (Tax Fraud, Lies, Deception) 2/8 JFK Jr.s ex: Kissing him was magical Hot News TodayMy Daily Buzz … jfk . Information and news about (CBS News) John F. Kennedy Jr. was once known as the most eligible bachelor in America. Now, nearly 12 years after his death, his former girlfriend, Christina in Hot News Today. … JFK airport transfer security lapses cited » Foxs News – Where … Hot, dry weather stokes raging Texas wildfires · JFK airport transfer security lapses cited · Worthplaying · Albert Pujols Drives In Game-Winner For Cardinals Tuesday · Tiger Woods: Making Sunday Charge, Striking Fear in the Field … The song 'Friday' was written about the JFK assassination. | iTREVINO The song ‘Friday’ was written about the JFK assassination. Submitted. Sunday, April 10th, 2011 05:10 pm GMT +00:00 05:10 PM. The Week In ‘Arab Spring’ Protests: What You Need To Know. Submitted. Sunday, April 10th, 2011 05:05 pm GMT … JFK's Irish Eyes Are Not Smiling On Today's Democratic Party … “And so,my fellow Americans,ask not what your Country can do for you; ask what you can do for your Country.” Boy,the current Democratic Party can’t get any further away from that sentiment these days. For today’s Democrats it’s…”Ask. Jackie Kennedy feared JFK would have affair with Liz Taylor | News … The Kennedys miniseries controversy distracts attention from its other problems. LveChiStyleBlog says: i need to go to bed, so why am i just google image searching photos of JFK Jr.?
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Swearing in – January 3, 2011 Justice Sandra Day O’Connor (2007) on Justice Robert H. Jackson & the Jackson Center Justice O’Connor’s Civic Education PSA Election Law: “Critics fault retired Justice O'Connor over ethics” Rick Hasen’s web log. « “Demonizing political equality” | Main. April 10, 2011. “Critics fault retired Justice O’Connor over ethics”. AP offers this report. Posted by Rick Hasen at April 10, 2011 07:49 PM. Critics fault retired Justice O'Connor over ethics KLAS-TV Channel 8 News Las Vegas. Local News, Weather, Traffic, Sports, Entertainment for Las Vegas. Critics fault retired Justice O'Connor over ethics – KTIV … KTIV NewsChannel 4 Sioux City IA: News, Weather and SportsCritics fault retired Justice O’Connor over ethics. Member Center: Create Account|; Log In; Manage Account|; Log Out. SITE SEARCH WEB SEARCH BY Google … Critics fault retired Justice O'Connor over ethics (AP) | MacHelp … WASHINGTON – Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor continues to hear cases in U.S. appeals courts, while also playin… Critics fault retired Justice O'Connor over ethics | Boston Cab … By Mary Altaffer, AP Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor speaks at a law school in New York last April. EnlargeCloseBy Mary Altaffer, AP Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor speaks at a law school in New York … liberalideals says: Critics fault retired Justice O'Connor over ethics – Politics …: Liberal interest groups have faulted Justices… http://bit.ly/fFslyF
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The logistical and security challenges posed by next month’s royal visit to Ireland are immense As I write, I am stuck on a halted train somewhere north of Dundalk, unable to cross the Irish border. There is a bomb alert, not only on the rail link but also on the M1 motorway running parallel to it. To pass the time while we wait for instruction from staff on the 7.30am Dublin to Belfast Enterprise service, I peruse the coverage of the proposed royal visit to Ireland next month. And, as I read the details of the trip, I cannot believe my eyes. The first startling element to the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh’s historic Irish tour – the first by a British monarch since 1912 – is the time. They will stay for three days, between May and 20 May. Hardly anyone had expected, when the visit was first announced, that the royal couple would stay in the Republic for more than one day. To string out that visit over 72 hours will undoubtedly give those opposed to it more of a chance to cause mayhem. However, the most stunning aspect of the planning (or lack of?) for this are some of the locations the Queen will attend. Among her stops will be a ceremony in Dublin’s Garden of Remembrance and later Croke Park, the national/spiritual home of the Gaelic Athletic Association. Even if you leave aside the historic neuralgia that these places hold for a lot of nationalist-minded Irish people, the sheer logistical and security challenges they pose are daunting. The Garden of Remembrance commemorates those who died in the 1916 Easter Rising and later the War of Independence against the British. Croke Park was the scene, in 1920, of the first Bloody Sunday massacre when British troops fired into the crowd, killing 16 civilians in retaliation for Michael Collins’s assassination squads murdering British agents across Dublin. The prospect of a British Queen visiting those hallowed sights will inflame further the passions of the unrepresentative but vocal, often violent, minority who adhere to dissident republicanism. Yet it is the geography that poses a serious modern-day problem for the Irish and British officials who are choreographing this groundbreaking royal visit. Take first the Garden of Remembrance, which is located at the northern end of O’Connell Street. Overlooking the gardens are a row of splendid and well-preserved Georgian houses that are home to the Irish Writers’ Centre, a museum dedicated to Irish authors and poets, and an award-winning restaurant. All these buildings will presumably have to be evacuated of their staff and then occupied by Garda officers in order to secure them. Behind the main memorial, which was completed in time for the 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising, is the Rotunda Maternity Hospital which, it is assumed, will also have to be taken over by the Garda in order to keep the Queen and the Duke safe from any line of dissident fire. And even if you also temporarily leave out the prospect that the likes of the Real IRA, the Continuity IRA and Óghlaigh na hÉireann will deploy security alerts across Dublin to disrupt the royal entourage, the Irish state still faces the prospect of horrendously damaging global publicity. If we stay with the Garden of Remembrance, it is worth noting that is only a short walk from there to inner city working class Dublin redoubts which have long been steeped in republican traditions. The dissident republicans could gather demonstrators in, say, the Summerhill area and march them up towards the end of Parnell Street, where it intersects with the north end of O’Connell Street. In those kind of routes, the Garda’s riot squad would have to be deployed leading to potentially violent clashes between anti-royalist protestors and the force. All of this would be within earshot of the Queen and and Duke inside the gardens and, more critically, in front of the world’s cameras. If the anti-ceasefire republicans get mobilised, they could grab world headlines, with violent street disorder taking place just a couple of hundred yards away from where the Queen is standing. The logistics of her tour of key sites in north inner Dublin is further complicated by the question of how to get her and the Duke, and their security teams, up to Croke Park. The Garda Síochána will have to create a huge cordon sanitaire along one of the main arterial northern arterial routes into the city centre. They may have to corral demonstrators off the road along Dorset Street prior to the royal cavalcade reaching the GAA’s magnificent stadium on the banks of Dublin’s appropriately named Royal Canal. Overall, if violence erupts on the streets around the heart of Dublin’s north inner city, these pictures will be beamed all around the planet; they will partly – if not largely – colour the coverage which, for a republic seeking to rebuild its international image after the national humiliation of going with the begging bowl to Europe and the IMF, is disastrous. None of this is to suggest that the majority of Irish people oppose the royal visit. Far from it. Judging by opinion polls, the views of the country’s main political parties and the ongoing fascination with the House of Windsor in Irish newspapers, magazines, television and radio programmes, the overwhelming majority welcome the arrival of the Queen. But in the era of 24/7 news, it is very often a militant and determined minority who can, through violent actions, steal the headlines and dominate the agenda. This is what organisations like Republican Sinn Féin or the Real IRA-aligned 32 County Sovereignty Committee are hoping for. The ill thought-out logistical planning for the royal visit, especially in Dublin, makes that scenario all the more possible. In the meantime, the train has rolled back to Dundalk, with buses waiting at the station to transfer us up north by road. We cannot travel on the main route into Northern Ireland as the M1 remains shut. Only six days after republican dissidents caused outrage with the murder of a young Catholic police officer in Omagh, they are back inflicting more disruption to the lives of ordinary Irish citizens who do not sympathise at all with their narrow, futile agenda. Yet provoking such opprobrium doesn’t seem to bother them, and nor will it if they succeed in disrupting the royal visit next month. The Queen Ireland Henry McDonald guardian.co.uk
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World Development Report 2011 warns that chronic cycles of criminal and political violence remain the biggest threats The World Bank is calling for a new focus in global development efforts towards providing justice, law and order to the estimated 1.5 billion people living in fragile and failed states. In its World Development Report 2011 , the bank warns that one of the biggest threats to development in the 21st century is chronic insecurity caused by cycles of criminal and political violence that defy easy answers. The report asks: “How is it that, almost a decade after renewed international engagement with Afghanistan the prospects of peace seem distant? How is it that entire urban communities can be terrorised by drug traffickers? How is it that countries in the Middle East and north Africa could face explosions of popular grievances despite, in some cases, sustained high growth and improvement in social indicators?” Patterns of global violence have changed in recent years, with fewer conventional conflicts between two identifiable sides. The number of deaths from civil wars are only a quarter of what they were 30 years ago. In their place, since the end of the cold war, is what Sarah Cliffe, one of the report’s directors, calls more fluid types of violence, often driven by cross-border crime, such as drug trafficking. “Peace processes in southern Africa and central America have been threatened by criminal violence,” Cliffe said. “In Guatemala you have more people dying now from criminal violence and from drug trafficking than you did during the civil war.” In such circumstances, conventional development spending may do little or nothing to improve the situation for ordinary people. Cliffe said: “The message is that getting the basics in place is crucial. Without a basic functioning justice system, for instance, and an economic stake in society for people, then more sophisticated plans to improve education or health systems or infrastructure tend not to work, because they get undermined by turbulence and instability.” Escaping from repeated cycles of violence in fragile or failed states could take a generation at best, the report argues, but it is possible through the gradual rebuilding of legitimate institutions. It says the priority should be placed on those institutions that provide three crucial ingredients of a stable society: citizen security, justice and jobs. This means outside assistance is often best provided by specialists in human rights, mediation and policing, alongside traditional humanitarian and development aid workers. The international community has a role in trying to cushion an affected society from the external stress of conflicts on its borders or drug trafficking. The report cites Ethiopia, Mozambique and Rwanda as countries that have successfully emerged from violent conflict and are making rapid progress towards reducing poverty. “What we look at in the experience of countries which have gone through these transformations is the emphasis on what it takes to keep the peace during periods of dramatic change,” Cliffe said. “It’s very much less linked to technocratic approaches to how to build the best schools or dams.” World Bank Conflict and development Aid Economics Global economy Poverty Drugs trade Julian Borger guardian.co.uk
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